Encyclopedia of Spiritual — The Way Out by Joseph Benner

Now if you are ready to hear the law, we will state it in words that everyone can understand.

Note these words, and let them impress themselves on you, so that from this moment ever afterward they will live in your mind as a guiding influence.

"WHATEVER YOU THINK AND HOLD IN CONSCIOUSNESS AS BEING SO, OUTMANIFESTS ITSELF IN YOUR BODY OR AFFAIRS."

Whether you accept this as yet or not, consider for a while the truth that every thought you think, especially those relating in any way to self, hovers around in your mental atmosphere, just as a child stays close to its parent. These thoughts being about yourself receive the life that maintains them from the feeling that you put into them.

In other words, the thoughts themselves are but mental forms, but when you think them with feeling of any kind you fill these forms with life and they become as living things which ever return to you, their parent, to be fed with more living power.

For all feeling expressed is life, is vital power, and if you only knew it, all the thoughts which persistently influence your mind and harass you, are only your mental children clamoring for food and attention, and compelling more worrying, anxiety, or fear from you; all of which are excellent food containing rich vital power, and which makes them grow rapidly, until they become so powerful that in time they dominate your mind so that you can scarcely think of anything else.

When the fact is, these thoughts exist to you only when you let them into your mind that is, they are of importance to you only when you give them attention and recognition, But on the other hand, their power over you and their life can quickly be nullified by simply knowing the law, and refusing to feed them longer with life power by giving them further attention or interest, And it should not be necessary to state that voicing such thoughts definitely and speedily outmanifests them, for the spoken word is far more potent than the thought.

Above all else you should guard carefully your speech, voicing nothing you do not want to see manifest. Always remember, however, that by preventing such thoughts entering the mind there will be no impulse to voice them. So that you can see now that it is all a matter of consciousness, of thinking and harboring the right kind of thoughts those you wish to outmanifest, and of letting into your mind no thoughts you do not want to manifest in your body or affairs.

And perhaps you can also see that what is ordinarily called thinking is only the admitting into your mind of thoughts that originated chiefly in other minds and which you of course attracted to you. This is also true of all negative, inharmonious and destructive thoughts; there must be something in you that attracts them or they would not come. Many will still permit them to come, for only by the suffering, hardship and struggle to escape from their influence that you undergo, will you learn how to free yourself and gain the power to control and consciously direct your life to constructive ends.

That is the hard way, but we are now going to show you the true way to free yourself forever from fear and worry about finances, and from all other destructive forces. We are assuming that all who read are students and followers of Christ's teachings. You remember those significant words of His in the Sermon on the Mount.

"Take no thought (or be not anxious) saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or with what shall we be clothed; for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek first the Kingdom (Consciousness) of God, and His righteousness (Right Ideas); and all these things will be added unto you."

We know that those words seem important to you, but we also know that very few take them as actual promises and try definitely and determinedly to put them to the proof. But that is the very thing you must do, if you would obey the law; and when we show you how to free yourself from fear and worry you will not only be able to free yourself from the power money has over you, but you will have found the straight and narrow way to the Kingdom. And all the powers of the Kingdom will help you, if you are strong and determined enough to win the goal. For the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is only a state of consciousness where we do right thinking where we think God's thoughts only.

Can you do that? Surely you can if you will. Then this is the way: THE WAY you must train yourself to STAND GUARD CONTINUALLY AT TRE DOOR OF YOUR MIND, AND TO LET IN NO THOUGHTS OR FEELINGS THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO OUTMANIFEST.

Think this over carefully, and you will see that it is the only way.

It may seem hard at first, and you may not know what to admit and what to deny.

But guard the door from every negative thought and feeling of whatsoever nature from every thought that you know God would not have you think; from every doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, or concern of any kind; from every tendency to criticize, judge or condemn anybody or anything or any condition; from self pity, jealousy, envy, irritation, unkindness, anger, hatred, etc. These will give you an idea of what are negative and ungodlike thoughts, and which must no longer have a part in your consciousness.